Ghetto Superstar
A Youtube flurry led to the discussion that hip-hop videos are all about place. Biggie Smalls, Nas, ok pretty much any New York rapper has shot a music video of a saunter through the neighborhoods of his youth.
Go West Coast, and although Tupac hops into the convertible by the third frame, the camera is still moving along iconic vistas of Los Angeles institutions, strip-malls, and palm trees.
This idea of urban placeness, a fierceness of home in spite of decay or danger (or sometimes as a result of those difficulties) comes up in the introduction to The New American Ghetto, a ginormous book of photography and musings on the semi-abandoned neighborhoods of the American city by Camilo Jose Vergara.
Cora Moody, the president of the tenants’ association at the Hayes Homes in the Central Ward of Newark, lived for ten years in a now-derelict building, part of the Hayes development, that she calls “a piece of my history.” Contrasting with what remains — the stinking vacant structure, with its broken windows and its entrance full of garbage and excrement — is the vital community that the building once anchored: “I was pregnant with my fifth child when I moved in there. I can see my kids playing hopscotch, I can hear them outside my window, calling up for money.” Pointing to a littered, overgrown spot on the grounds, she says: “There used to be a shower there. My kids would use it at all times during the summer, even at midnight, and I would not be worried. There were public telephones in here; you could use them. You could wait, you did not have to get your own phone right away. We did not have to worry about people hurting us. There was a community in there of people you could trust and got along with. ” Cora explains why she sees the ruined building with so much affection, saying: “You cannot shift memories to another place. These are my greatest memories. They took all that away from us when they closed the building.” The present is inscribed on a wall nearby: “Shahonna Tovheedah in the motherfucking house. If you don’t like it kiss my ass.”
I think I love cities so much because there are so many memories soaked into every street. I want to do for Seoul what Historypin is trying to do for every city. Or what Vergara did for one storefront in Harlem…
